Marketing | June 25, 2012

4 Things Advertising Agencies Tell You That’s Wrong

The Reasons Advertising Agencies Tell You Repetition is Important

Why Most Local Business Owners Spend Too Much on Advertising and What Caused It

Since the invention of the advertising industry, advertising agencies have worked hard to program thoughts into the minds of small business owners in an attempt to convince them that they should be spending more on advertising.  The reason… ad agencies make more when businesses spend more on advertising.  So this article will share some of our passionate thoughts about how these ad agencies have told you wrong.

For decades (at least since the invention of the television), ad agencies have said the important of repetition in advertising your local business.  Advertising agencies will often say that a consumer must see your brand and call to action seven times before they will buy.  While this strategy might have worked four decades ago, it is no longer effective for local businesses today.  Why?  Well… the fact is consumers are exposed to so many more sources of advertising than ever before, so it is increasing challenging for them to 1) see your brand and call to action seven times and 2) take notice of your advertisement since they are seeing sometimes hundreds a day.

Repetition with advertising is important, yet more important to big brands and large corporations who have multi-million dollar budgets and the ability to afford advertising on Super Bowl commercials.  Unless you have this multi-million ad budget, you might look for another strategy – this is where Social180 can help!

Second, small local business owners are often told of the importance of creativity with advertising.  In other words, making an ad stand out from the rest is very important. It is, yet many large companies spend million of dollars on creativity with their advertising strategies and their version of creativity does not always work well for small local business.  The creativity local business owners need is the creative offer that gains the attention of consumers interested in their products or services – not creative in the sense of making beautiful.  While beauty can be very important, small local business owners do not normally have the budget to get the same quality of beauty as a large corporation with millions of dollars.

Third, many local business owners get response advertising and brand advertising confused.  Branding and brand advertising is mention to get consumers familiar enough with your brand that they always think of you.  This works great for Coke, Facebook, Ford, Apple, Google, and Microsoft; yet it is more challenging for a local landscaping company in Dallas.

Finally, many ad agencies tell local business owners that advertising sources are critically important which is accurate.  The difference is why they tell them ad sources are important.  Ad agencies normally tell local business owners that the more ad sources they advertise with, the better their results.  Social180 has found this to not be true in many cases.  Take a windows and doors company in Fort Worth for example.  When Social180 began helping them, they were spending over $170,000 per year in advertising with about nine different sources only to find that they were not winning the business they wanted with seven of them.  So in this and many other cases, effectively advertising with multiple sources does not mean advertising with as many ad sources as possible.

To learn more about how Social180 can help with advertising for small business and your ad strategy, Contact Social180 at 469-420-0180!  You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube.